A Romantic Movement
THE history of Art is a history of revolts against the estab- lished order : of these periodical risings the successful and the salutary are those whose leaders truly believe that they have something better to put in the place of that which they wish to demolish, and are prepared to deliver the goods. All other leaders may be considered hooligans, whose aim is merely to break windows and gloat over the damage. But it is by fruitful insurrections that the palace of Art is built and renewed and extended, and among such must certainly be placed the revolt of the Pre-Raphaelites. Anyone who has the least intelligent interest in Art must be interested in this remarkable brotherhood, and Mr. Earle VVelby's book treating of the early operations of the rebels should have a warm welcome. He reproduces for us etchings by Holman Hunt, Rossetti and others which have long been inaccessible to ordinary folk, and arranges his material, which includes his gleanings from Mr. Thomas Wise's Swin- burnian treasures, in a very scholarly and suggestive fashion. We may not agree with all his conclusions : in his appreciation of the Pre-Raphaelites, for instance, he depreciates the work of rebels of a later date, as when he speaks of the "little men" of the 'nineties. For, whether we dislike them or not, we
cannot so summarily dismiss artists like Beardsley, and poets like Dowson. But his brief is the pre-Raphaelites, and his a&ocacy a model of sound and temperate argument.
The movement was, as such always are, a reaction against convention, and, as always, the leaders of it regarded as worthless and ,conventional a great deal of the finest work ever produced. Holman Hunt, Millais and Rossetti were the founders of the movement, and to what iconoclasm they were sworn is indicated by the incredible declaration which was, so to speak, the oath of the Brotherhood. We cannot find that Mr. Welby alludes to this, but it is an important document in their early history. It puts forth a list of fourteen names, some of which, as in Baedeker's guide-books, are marked with stars. Jesus Christ has four stars ; the author of " Job " three ; Raphael, Coventry Patmore, Mrs. Browning, Longfellow, the author of Stories After Nature, each receive one ; the rest (undistinguished by stars) are Newton, Bacon, Michelangelo, Joan of Arc, Pheidias and Tintoret. Then comes the declaration to be signed by all members of the Brotherhood : " There exists no other immortality than what is centred in their names." And this was their serious belief : Praxiteles, Dante, Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci were not to be reckoned among the immortals, and with the ground thus cleared by this sumptuous explosion, the Brother- hood went to work to paint pictures and write poems which should fill the gaps.
Other recruits joined : Woolner, the sculptor and poet, William Morris, Burne-Jones and Swinburne were the most notable, and all had the most unclouded faith in themselves and in each other. Rossetti introduced Burne-Jones at Little Holland House by saying that he was -the greatest genius of the age: Ruskin, who was their prophet, vowed that he was
to be classed for colouring with Giorgione, and for drawing with Albrecht Diirer : Burne-Jones reciprocated Rossetti's compliment, Swinburne dedicated to Burne-Jones his Poems and Ballads, and they all assured William Morris that he had brought beauty at last into English homes with his carpets and :chairs and wallpapers, and the epic into the English language. The affiliation grew wider, Rossetti in especial discovering an almost embarrassing number of immortals, and the whole band of them, enthusiastic and convinced, continue to work on, delightfully regardless of the silence or scorn of critics, provided Ruskin approved, and produced rake and beautiful work, which, with all its weaknesses and one-sidedness had that spark of genius without which all Art ,is sounding brass. That their rejection of convention was giving rise to a new convention did not concern them, nor that their gospel that all great art must be highly finished led to the fallacy that finish in itself implied great art irres- peetive of who it was who was so industrious. Only noble subjects were fit for the artist, and thus Holman Hunt busy at his canvas representing " Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Druids," lamented that the subject of Millais' " Two Lovers Whispering by a Garden Wall," was not truly elevating. Again, they could not appreciate -fine and imaginative work in any line but their own and subject to their canons, and this failure in perception farcically culminated in Whistler's libel action against Ruskin, when Burne-Jones (who hated the part
that friendship obliged him to play) gravely declared that the " Nocturne in Black and Gold " was not a work of art
nor worth £200. Mr. Frith (painter of the " Derby Day ") agreed with him, and -Mr. Tom Taylor, critic and editor of Punch, said that it was only one step nearer a picture than a " delicately-tinted wallpaper."
Mr. Welby makes an interesting suggestion when he says that the pictorial art of the pre-Raphaelites is best to be understood by those who approach it through the work of their poets such as Christina and Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, and with rare divination he quotes these loveliest and little known lines :—
Christ keep the Hollow Land All the summer-tide : Still we cannot understand Where the waters glide.
Only dimly seeing them Coldly slipping through
Many green-lipped cavern mouths . _ x Where the-hilk are bTue" There, indeed, is a true guide to the spirit of their pictures to turn away from which, as he so wisely says, " is to turn away from our only opportunity of seizing what doubtless has been and ever will be part of life, but is seizable only in their embodiments of it." That is high and illuminating stuff, but in the light of it we are moved to wonder why he says so little of the same sort in regard to Burne-Jones's work, who, he tells us, " is an artist who proposed by taking thought to add a cubit to his stature." This desired cubit, he explains, was his draughtsmanship, which he calls " an irrelevant merit." It would be interesting to know at some future time whether Mr. Welby does not consider him of the true Brother- hood, and why he regards as irrelevant the skill which Ruskin compared with Albrecht Diirer's. E. F. BENSON.
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